![]() ![]() Between the Armory Show and the Chicago Little Theatre and birth of its movement, the season of 1912–13 opened the eyes of the American public to the wealth of new ideas pouring out of Europe. Browne and Volkenburg brought to their small house in Chicago’s Fine Arts Building a potent mix of the new masters of the drama together with a fresh interest in Greek classic plays and even works for the marionette theater, which Van Volkenburg revolutionized as a fine art form. Incredibly, after it closed in New York, the show-formally known as the International Exposition of Modern Art- moved to the Art Institute of Chicago in late March, and for several weeks, both movements converged within two blocks. The date of the founding of the Chicago Little Theatre (CLT) was auspicious, coming mere months before New York’s Armory Show that shocked and energized the country with the new visual art from the Continent. The movement was in fact a rejection of the frothy shows of the American professional stage that played in “big theaters.” The little theaters were meant to house the new European drama and aesthetic. The name may strike us as unfortunate: today it sounds as though it’s about children’s dramatics, but it was in dead earnest. The company that lent its name to the movement, the Little Theatre Movement, was the Chicago Little Theatre, the recognized avante garde of art theater in this country. The “fourth floor back” referenced by one of the greatest playwrights in the English language was the home of the Chicago Little Theatre in the Fine Arts Building, just steps down Michigan Avenue from the Art Institute of Chicago. The work this man sitting behind me did twenty years ago on a fourth-floor-back in Chicago-that is what matters.” - Too Late to Lament, p 105 Well, I’m here to tell you that none of those things matters a tuppenny damn. You have all heard and read how he has presented Journey’s End all over the world (tumultuous applause). You all know that he is running six West End theatres simultaneously and putting on grand shows there (loud applause). “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “you all know the name of Maurice Browne (applause). University of Michigan Libraries (Special Collections), Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne Papers. Pen and ink drawing and stage set by Raymond Johnson. "Fourth-floor-back": interior of the Chicago Little Theatre, 1915, set for The Trojan Women. The Chicago Little Theatre and the Little Theatre MovementĪt the height of Maurice Browne’s fortunes as a theater producer in London just before the Second World War, he was introduced at at a reception by George Bernard Shaw. But come 1912, all that was about to change-and it would lead directly to the founding of Cornish’s Theater Department. ![]() Also a hit on Broadway was David Belasco’s 1905 melodrama TheGirl of the Golden West. Cohan was the “king of Broadway,” with his musicals like LittleJohnny Jones and George Washington, Jr. The theater in America in the first decade of the 20th century was dominated by frothy entertainments, such as melodramas, musicals, and comedies, punctuated with the occasional Shakespeare production for a little bit of culture. So where was the US amidst this excitement and tumult? Just about nowhere. Vibrant designs and a new theatricality were a hallmark of the Ballets Russes in Paris which brought a whole new wave of music to the European scene, with works by Stravinsky, Debussy, and Prokofiev. In the midst of this rise of modernism in the visual arts, scenographers such as Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig were introducing a whole other kind of dramatic scenery for the stage. The end of the 19th century saw the rise of modern art, and the 20th brought striking and revolutionary works from Cezanne, Picasso, Renoir, and, of course, the iconoclastic Marcel Duchamp. Companies beginning with Antoine’s Théâtre Libre in the 1880s and including the Moscow Arts Theatre and the Abbey Theatre of Augusta, Lady Gregory, and Jacques Copeau with his Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier showed the way for creating new forms of theatrical companies with fresh aesthetics. Italian actress Eleonora Duse turned public tastes away from declamation and bombast and inclined them towards naturalism. Theater Department Centennial Arrives: Why It's a Big DealĪt the Armory Show, 1913: Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase. 100 Years of the Cornish Theater Department ![]()
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